Butch Bagabuyo leaving Kamloops Law Courts on April 24, 2025. (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Dylana Kneeshaw

FIRST-DEGREE MURDER TRIAL

Forensic accountant tells trial how accused Kamloops lawyer blew through murdered client’s $774k

Jun 16, 2025 | 5:05 PM

VANCOUVER — A first-degree murder trial for a former Kamloops lawyer accused of killing his client is hearing critical expert testimony this week. Monday (June 16), a forensic accountant testified to what allegedly happened to the nearly $800,000 the victim handed over to his lawyer to hide from his ex-wife.

This transaction eventually turned into a serious point of contention between the two men and even with the $774,000 added to his bank accounts, the report indicates Bagabuyo’s personal finances still wound up going more than $100,000 into overdraft.

Out of Vancouver Law Courts this week, court heard details of a financial report documenting hundreds of thousands of dollars of Mohd Abdullah’s savings that were transferred to Butch Bagabuyo. According to the forensic accountant tasked with tracing those funds, that money is long gone.

Opening statements in this case claimed back in 2016, Bagabuyo and Abdullah planned to have Bagabuyo hold Abdullah’s savings in trust so the money wouldn’t be included in Abdullah’s divorce settlement.

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Monday, Crown lawyer Kevin Marks asked questions of accountant Beata Laskowska. Her report used statements from 17 different bank accounts and credit cards over a seven-year period for Bagabuyo’s law firm and his personal accounts.

Laskowska says she identified $774,452 sent from Abdullah to Bagabuyo.

Of that total, $564,952 of Abdullah’s funds were deposited to the law firm’s trust account, with $209,500 deposited to Bagabuyo’s personal account.

The most recent transfer to Bagabuyo, amounting to $7,500, took place on February 23, 2022 which was less than a month before Abdullah was killed on March 11, 2022.

Throughout the seven-year reporting period, Bagabuyo’s accounts were repeatedly shown to have been in an overdraft state. Laskowska’s report states Bagabuyo’s personal account had an opening overdraft balance of $15,020 at the beginning of the analysis period. During the seven-year span, the report shows a total of $1,210,892 was deposited and a total of $1,377,020 was spent, resulting in an overdraft balance of $181,149 at the end of the analysis period.

In fact, Laskowska’s report says without the multiple deposits from Abdullah, Bagabuyo’s personal accounts would have been in an overdraft position throughout the entire analysis period of February 2016 to May 2023.

As for what the money was spent on, the report cites transactions related to living expenditures. Over the seven-year period, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent at Costco, ICBC, London Drugs, Big Steel Box, Kamloops Insurance Services, Wal-Mart, Winners, Kamloops Honda, along with construction work at Bagabuyo’s Columbia Street home, mortgage payments, interest fees and cash withdrawals.

Bank statements for Bagabuyo’s law firm account were limited, with Laskowska citing only a handful of transaction statements she was able to find. But of those, she determined 79 per cent of the funds deposited to the law firm accounts in the seven-year period were from Mohd Abdullah.

The information from Laskowska says the largest deposit amounted to $564,952.00 from ManuLife to Bagabuyo’s law firm account on behalf of Abdullah.

Nearly 80 per cent of the funds from the law firm account were transferred to Bagabuyo’s personal account, while the rest was used for business rent, business expenses and unknown purposes.

Laskowska was asked whether any transactions were found of funds being transferred back to Abdullah and she confirmed there were none.

Crown witness testimony is slated to extend into this week, which was originally scheduled to be the final week of proceedings. If the trial goes beyond June 20, it will have to reconvene out of Vancouver in August.